-LRB- Mental Floss -RRB- -- It 's Nobel Prize announcement week , and if you had Carol W. Greider , Elizabeth Blackburn , or Jack Szostak in your office pool , you 're off to a good start -LRB- the trio will share this year 's Nobel Prize in Medicine -RRB- . As we await news of the rest of the winners , here are some stories about past Nobel laureates .

Nobel Prize winners receive a medal and a cash award .

1 . Robert Lucas , winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on the theory of `` rational expectations , '' split his $ 1 million prize with his ex-wife .

If there were a Nobel Prize for Foresight or Timing , she should be nominated , based on a clause in their divorce settlement from seven years earlier : `` Wife shall receive 50 percent of any Nobel Prize . '' The clause expired on October 31 , 1995 . Had Lucas won any year after , he would have kept the whole million .

2 . Physicist Lise Meitner , whose work helped lead to the discovery of nuclear fission , was reportedly nominated for the Nobel Prize 13 times without ever winning -LRB- though nominations are kept secret , so we do n't know for sure -RRB- . This makes her the Dynasty of the Nobel Prize scene -- that show was nominated for 24 Emmy Awards but never won . Other analogies we 'd accept : The Color Purple -LRB- 11 Oscar nominations in 1985 , no wins -RRB- , the Buffalo Bills or Minnesota Vikings -LRB- 4 Super Bowl losses each without a victory -RRB- and William Jennings Bryan -LRB- three-time Democratic nominee for President , losing twice to McKinley and once to Taft . -RRB-

3 . People who refused the prize :

• Le Duc Tho was awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize with Henry Kissinger for their roles in brokering a Vietnam cease fire at the Paris Peace Accords . Citing the absence of actual peace in Vietnam , Tho declined to accept .

• Jean Paul Sartre waved off the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature . His explanation : `` It is not the same thing if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre or if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre , Nobel Prize winner . A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution , even if it takes place in the most honorable form . ''

• Afraid of Soviet retribution if he traveled to Stockholm to claim his prize , Boris Pasternak declined to accept the 1958 Prize in Literature , which he 'd earned for Doctor Zhivago . The Academy refused his refusal . `` This refusal , of course , in no way alters the validity of the award . There remains only for the Academy , however , to announce with regret that the presentation of the Prize can not take place . '' Yevgeny Pasternak accepted the prize on behalf of his deceased father in 1989 .

• Swedish poet Erik Axel Karlfeldt won for Literature in 1918 . He did not accept because he was Secretary of the Swedish Academy , which awards the prize . He was given the award posthumously in 1931 . This was allowed because the nomination was made before Karlfeldt died -- no candidate may be proposed after death . Mental Floss : 10 technologies we stole from the animal kingdom

4 . In 2007 , 90-year-old professor Leonid Hurwicz became the oldest person to ever win -LRB- one-third of the Prize in Economics -RRB- ; at 87 , writer Doris Lessing became the oldest woman -LRB- Literature -RRB- .

5 . DNA expert Kary Mullis -- 1993 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry -- was scheduled to be a defense witness in O.J. Simpson 's murder trial . However , Simpson 's lawyer Barry Scheck felt the prosecution 's DNA case was already essentially destroyed , and he did n't want Mullis ' personal life to distract jurors -LRB- he 'd expressed an affinity for LSD . -RRB-

6 . Nobel Laureates you must know : Teddy Roosevelt , Woodrow Wilson , Rev. Martin Luther King , Jr. , Mother Teresa , Elie Wiesel , Mikhail Gorbachev , Nelson Mandela , Yasser Arafat , Shimon Peres , Yitzhak Rabin , Jimmy Carter , Toni Morrison , William Faulkner , T.S. Eliot , Ernest Hemingway , Samuel Beckett , Pierre & Marie Curie , Max Planck and Albert Einstein .

7 . Big names who never won : Dmitri Mendeleev , Leo Tolstoy , Virginia Woolf , James Joyce , Marcel Proust , Mark Twain , Gertrude Stein , Henrik Ibsen , Joan Robinson , Thomas Edison , Nikola Tesla , Jules-Henri Poincaré , Raymond Damadian and Mahatma Gandhi . Mental Floss : 6 people who accidentally found a fortune

8 . Winners without the greatest reputations :

• Daniel Carleton Gajdusek , who won in 1976 for his research in human slow-virus infections , spent 19 months in jail after pleading guilty in 1997 to charges of child molestation .

• Johannes Fibiger won in 1926 after discovering parasitic worms cause cancer -- a breakthrough that turned out to not be true .

• Yasser Arafat shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin . This decision caused Nobel Committee member Kare Kristiansen to resign . `` What consequences will result , '' he asked at the time , `` when a terrorist with such a background is awarded the world 's most prestigious prize ? ''

• William Shockley won for Physics in 1956 for his role in the invention of the semiconductor , but his support of the eugenics movement alienated the scientific community . Shockley also donated sperm to the Repository for Germinal Choice , a sperm bank developed to spread humanity 's best genes .

9 . As part of his divorce settlement , Einstein 's Nobel Prize money went to his ex-wife , Mileva Maric .

10 . The Curie family is a Nobel Prize machine , winning five : Pierre and Marie for Physics in 1901 ; Marie solo for Chemistry in 1911 ; daughter Irene and her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie for Chemistry in 1935 ; and Henry Labouisse , who was married to Pierre and Marie 's daughter Eve , accepted on behalf of UNICEF in 1965 .

11 . Marie Curie 's second prize was marred by scandal . Then a widow , Curie had an affair with a married scientist , Paul Langevin -- a former pupil of Pierre Curie . Love letters were involved , eventually leading to a duel between Langevin and the editor of the newspaper that had printed them -LRB- no shots were actually fired . -RRB-

According to NobelPrize.org , when it was suggested that Curie not accept the prize , she wrote a shrewd letter , `` which pointed out that she had been awarded the Prize for her discovery of radium and polonium , and that she could not accept the principle that appreciation of the value of scientific work should be influenced by slander concerning a researcher 's private life . ''

12 . Singing support -- While there 's no evidence the Nobel judges can be swayed by theme songs , that has n't stopped Loriana Lana from composing one for Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi . `` Peace Can '' includes the lyrics , `` Silvio forever will be / Silvio is reality / Silvio forever ! / Silvio gives us trust . ''

13 . Alfred Nobel -- inventor of dynamite -- may have been inspired to create the Nobel Prize after a premature obituary in a French newspaper called him a `` merchant of death . ''

14 . Nobel died on December 10 , 1896 . The formal awards ceremony is held in Stockholm each year on the anniversary of his death . The first awards show took place on December 10 , 1901 . -LRB- These things take time to plan . -RRB-

And in case you were wondering just how much of a say Alfred Nobel had in the prize , here 's what he wrote in his will :

`` The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way :

`` The capital shall be invested by my executors in safe securities and shall constitute a fund , the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who , during the preceding year , shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind . The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts , which shall be apportioned as follows : one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics ; one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement ; one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine ; one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency ; and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity among nations , for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses .

`` The prizes for physics and chemistry shall be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences ; that for physiological or medical works by the Caroline Institute in Stockholm ; that for literature by the Academy in Stockholm ; and that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storting . It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration whatever shall be given to the nationality of the candidates , so that the most worthy shall receive the prize , whether he be Scandinavian or not . '' Mental Floss : 13 bizarre stipulations in wills

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More than one Nobel winner had to share or give prize money to ex-wife

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Marie Curie was urged not to collect her second Nobel because of affair

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Three U.S. presidents have won the Nobel prize

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Lise Meitner was reportedly nominated for the Nobel Prize 13 times , but never won